


Tin Soldier

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:59:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only one resident in Storybrooke can remember life before the curse, but sometimes, he wishes he could forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tin Soldier

Everyone knows Mister Gold.

Anyone who lives in Storybrooke knows to listen out for the tap of the cane that lets you know he’s coming. It’s like an alarm bell if you hear it soon enough, and you can keep out of his way a little bit longer. 

You’ll never get away entirely, though.

Gold is thorough. Gold is hard. Gold doesn’t accept excuses or begging or defaulting. He will find you and you will repay what you owe, whether in the price you promised or in the flesh that you didn’t.

He’s ruthless and cruel and he smiles while he tears your life down. 

If he ever cared about anyone or anything, Hell would have frozen over and the demons would be playing ice hockey.

He knows all the stories. He cultivated most of them himself. He knows the use of having a name that makes people tremble, he’s had one before and he likes it that way, knowing that even now, he’s more feared than the Mayor ever could be. 

She has no idea that he knows what she did when she played into his hands. She has no idea that he remembers every bloody and savage deed that put her where she is. He never lets her know, as he watches the time trickle away. He’s simply Mr Gold, the pawnbroker, the shark, nothing more.

She may not owe him anymore, but he knows he owes her in blood and grief, so he bides his time, watching and waiting and smiling. She doesn’t trust him, which is hardly a surprise given their history, but she doesn’t believe him a threat. That’s why she comes to him for the child, and that’s why he gives her what she wants. 

That, he knows, is when things start to change.

No one comes to Storybrooke. Nothing changes, and if the Mayor - the Queen - had her way, nothing ever would. And yet, she asked for the child, and Gold did what he was asked. 

The child is the only one to ever grow up, quite the reverse of the pesky Pan-child. It becomes easier to mark the years when Henry is there. For once, there is something changing, and the older he gets, the closer Storybrooke gets to Emma. Gold sometimes wonders what she might be like, if she’ll be as fiercely proud as her mother or as daring as her father. She will have to be something quite special to take on the Queen.

He marks the days all the same, as he always has. There is a book in his house, locked safely in a room that no one but him knows about. He keeps the tally there, each night, when he goes to both remember and to forget.

For the first days in Storybrooke, it was a trial.

In the Enchanted forest, he had his castle, his fortress, and all that he needed.

In Storybrooke, he had to make adjustments.

Every night, he opens the door hidden within his closet, and closes it behind him as he makes his way into the basement room. There isn’t much there, but it’s what he needs: a table, a chair, a stool and the wheel.

Once, he told someone he spun to forget, but now, all he can think of as he spins is what he lost, and what he has to remember. Their faces spur him on, the people he lost so long ago, and as he turns the wheel, night after night, he loses himself in the memories.

It’s no longer gold. His touch has lost that power. All the same, the motions let him be himself for a time, no longer Mr Gold, but Rumpelstiltskin as he was before cowardice and a bloody knife left him imprisoned in his own body, too afraid of being powerless again to look for a way out, and when a way out was offered, too afraid to take it.

He spins by candlelight, remembering a thatched cottage decades ago. He spins until the memory is as sharp as it can be, and when it is, he takes up a pencil and tries to draw the face of the son he once had. He’s not an artist, he never pretended to be, but the table is covered in pictures of what he remembers of Baelfire. With time, the sketches improved, year on year, decade on decade, until he’s as close as he can get to seeing his son’s face again, but it will never be perfect.

There’s another face too, and this one is just as painful to remember. 

Baelfire fled from him, but Belle…

The wheel spins and blurs his vision. He blinks hard to clear his eyes, and his cheeks are hot and wet. He sees her face every night when he tries to sleep, and no matter what he does, he can never catch every facet of her on paper. 

The girl who came with him to be brave, the woman who left him to be strong for herself when he couldn’t be, the one death on his conscience that he can never erase or ignore.

Thread skims between his fingers and he watches it blindly.

More than three decades, and the last words she gave him still ring in his ears.

He wishes he had gone after her, wishes he had done anything but stand and silently try to ignore what she was saying. She was right, of course, brave, strong Belle, but even that heart of hers wasn’t enough to save her from her own flesh and blood.

Everyone has a chance for a happily ever after.

She had offered him a share in hers, her choice and her offer, and he had driven her away, to her death.

He wishes he could blame the Queen completely, but he knew it was his own fear, and his own stupidity that meant she was gone.

His palm slows the wheel and he rises. Sometimes, he wishes he could lower his guard enough to drink himself into a stupor, but not in this place, not in this time. The Queen might not suspect him, but better to be alert and on-guard than caught by surprise.

He snuffs out the candle with his fingertips and walks up the stairs, blind in the darkness, to the silent, empty house. It’s too large for him alone, but he wouldn’t be Mister Gold if he didn’t live somewhere that befitted his status. Or Rumpelstiltskin for that matter. Sometimes, it’s necessary to pander to appearances.

His feet carry him to where he wants to be, before he even notices.

The cabinet shines in the moonlight, and he stared at it blankly for a long time.

It isn’t as big or as grand as the one in the castle, and it contains the only thing that could ever give away his secret, his knowledge.

He opens the door, the polished handles cold under his skin, and takes out a single china cup, delicate and hand-painted and with a single chip from the rim on one side. It isn’t much, nestled in his hand, but if all that he possessed was ripped away, he knew this would be the single item he would hold onto.

She was wrong, it transpired. 

Belle.

She told him, once, that all he would have would be an empty heart and a chipped cup.

Gold has no heart, if you ask anyone in Storybrooke.

Rumplestiltskin, though, has a heart that was never empty, but is forever broken.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not intentionally making Gold a woobie, honest.


End file.
